Protests over low wages, such as this one in Long Beach in 2015 pressured local officials to raise minimum pay.

Janet Rodriguez, left, and Citlali Lara, right, are taking a course at Hope Builders to become medical assistants.(Photo by Michael Kitada, Contributing Photographer)

Citlali Lara, is currently working as a waitress, but is studying to work in the medical field. She practices injections as part of the course at Hope Builders in Anaheim.(Photo by Michael Kitada, Contributing Photographer)

“Even $12 to $15 an hour is not a living wage,” said David Elliott, president and chief executive of the Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce. “But it is good that the increase is gradual in California, as some smaller businesses might be affected.”

Across the nation, laws lifting wage floors have multiplied in recent years as the gap between rich and poor has widened. The skyrocketing cost of housing in the Golden State has contributed to a surge in homelessness and increased the poverty rate.

“Earnings generally have not kept pace,” notes a report this month by the California Budget & Policy Center, a Sacramento nonprofit. “After adjusting for inflation, the statewide median rent has increased by 13.2 percent since 2006, while the median annual earnings for full-time, year-round workers have increased by only 4.1 percent.”

Protests over low wages, such as this one in Long Beach in 2015 pressured local officials to raise minimum pay.

Taking into account housing, food, child care, transportation, medical needs, and basics such as clothing, housekeeping supplies and telephone service, along with income and payroll taxes, a California family of four with two working parents needs annual earnings of $75,952 on average to afford basic necessities.

This is equivalent to each working parent having a full-time job that pays $18.26 an hour. A family with only one working parent would need to earn $28.53 an hour to make ends meet, the report estimates.

Many business groups, including the California Chamber of Commerce, have fought expanding the minimum wage, asserting raises will lead to job losses and workplace automation.

However, Bryan Starr, president and CEO of the Greater Irvine Chamber, noted that key Southern California industries such as technology and aerospace pay above the minimum. And even from retail, restaurant and hotel companies most likely to pay the least, “there have been no concerns expressed to us,” he said.

“This is probably because the demand for workers is very high due to the near full employment,” Starr added.

In November, the jobless rate dropped to 2.8 percent in Orange County, to 4.1 percent in the Inland Empire and to 4.5 percent in Los Angeles County.

Despite the demand for workers, however, wages in Southern California have failed to keep pace with the cost of living, said Shakeel Sayed, executive director of Orange County Communities Organized for Responsible Development (OCCORD), a Garden Grove nonprofit.

“People work two jobs but they are still unable to pay rent and are too poor to care for their kids,” he said. “My wife teaches elementary school in South Los Angeles. Children with two working parents come to school hungry, and they don’t have a lunchbox.”

On a recent weekday, Citali Lara, a part-time waitress at a Norm’s restaurant, was winding up a 12-week course at Hope Builders, a Santa Ana nonprofit, to become a certified clinical medical assistant.

Lara, 22, a high school graduate with a few college credits, lives with her mother, an assembly line worker who has been pulling 12-hour shifts to allow her daughter to take the Hope Builders course. Both earn minimum wage.

The 50-cent raise “will help out temporarily,” Lara said. “But it is not a huge change. Everything is going up — food, gas, taxes. Two months ago, the rent in our whole apartment complex went from $1,200 to $1,500.”

One day, Lara hopes to become a licensed vocational nurse. The medical assistant job would be “a stepping stone,” she said.

In Hope Builders’ Anaheim classroom, Janet Rodriguez, 28, worked alongside Lara, learning how to give injections and take vital signs. Rodriguez, 28, has worked in retail since she graduated high school at 18. Now a saleswoman at a theme park souvenir shop, she still earns less than $11 an hour.

“Everyone is suffering with the minimum wage being so low,” she said.

Rodriguez lives in a $1,600-a-month Santa Ana mobile home with her husband, a security guard, and her mother-in-law, a housekeeper.

But she worries, like Lara, that as the minimum wage rises, “Everything else will go up as well. When everyone makes $20 an hour, will a gallon of milk cost $10?”

So far, economists have not seen an inflationary effect from minimum wage hikes. But Rodriguez said whatever the minimum rises to, she plans to continue her classes “if I can handle it.”

With mandatory holiday hours at the theme park, she has worked shifts ending at 2:45 a.m., just to be able to fit in her medical assistant training.

Margot Roosevelt covers economic news. She has been a staff reporter at The Orange County Register since 2012. Before that, she was on staff at the Los Angeles Times, covering environmental news. Earlier jobs: Congressional reporter for the Washington Post; foreign and national correspondent for Time Magazine.

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